Recent data indicates that coronavirus vaccination rates are on the decline, to the point where a reportby the Kaiser Family Foundation has predicted “a tipping point on vaccine enthusiasm in the next 2 to 4 weeks,” once most of the Americans who want the vaccine have gotten it.
When this critical mass is reached, it is likely – if recent history is anything to go by – that we will hear vaccine-hesitant Americans ridiculed as “anti-vaxxers” and fringe conspiracy theorists. But vaccine hesitancy is no fringe phenomenon: more than one in five Americans, including around 40% of Republicans, do not want to get vaccinated.
Instead of the usual routine of sneering and finger-wagging, it would behoove our public health officials to ask themselves what they may have done to lose the trust of such a large slice of the public.
The plain fact of the matter is that top public health officials, most notably Dr. Anthony Fauci, have systematically deceived the American people over the past year. This is a matter of verifiable public record. As reported in The New York Times on December 24 of last year, Fauci boasted openly that he had “slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts” on herd immunity numbers, “partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.”
Furthermore, Fauci did this “because many Americans seemed hesitant about vaccines,” proving a willingness to mislead the general public specifically to encourage vaccination.
This is a clear and unequivocal admission of deceit, one which even Fauci’s defenders cannot explain away. These are not the words of a scientist changing his views as new information comes in. They are the words of a political actor cynically manipulating Americans into a preferred course of action via twisted truth and outright deception.
The same goes for the abrupt, jarring about-face on masks early in the pandemic. Here, too, the authorities went from discouraging masks to mandating them not as the result of new scientific research but as a matter of pragmatic expedience. They wanted to preserve masks for health care workers, to prevent the sort of mass panic-buying that they had seen with toilet paper and other goods.
It may be argued that these were necessary deceptions; it cannot be argued that they were not deceptions. Those same figures who demand we “trust the science” have done a great deal to undermine that selfsame trust. While accusing lockdown opponents of peddling “misinformation,” public health officials have themselves been the largest-scale purveyors of misinformation this past year.
In light of this, is it inconceivable that we may learn, a few years from now, that the vaccines had serious potential side effects which the CDC knew of, but did not inform the public about, so as to decrease vaccine hesitancy? Hardly; in fact, I would say this is an uncomfortably plausible scenario.
There are other legitimate reasons for vaccine hesitancy. For one, there is the discouraging messaging on what people can do after being vaccinated. Per CDC guidelines, vaccinated persons must still wear masks, social distance, and avoid large gatherings. Meanwhile, we are told of a “permanent pandemic,” of future booster shots, of face masks into 2022 and for years to come. People can only be bait-and-switched for long before growing fed up with the game.
And lastly, there is the overriding sense of compulsion. When private and public forces (most recently the California public university system) come together to mandate vaccination as a prerequisite for participation in society, then this takes on the air of blackmail. It sows doubts about the efficacy of the vaccine – would they really have to push it this hard if it was so great? – and makes getting vaccinated into a symbol of cooperation, a mark of implicit consent to the current system.
Above it all, however, hangs the track record of government deception.
When the government misinforms the public, it never ends well. After the Bush administration’s claims about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were proven false, for instance, faith in American institutions decreased. We all pay the price for this loss of faith, because while it is good for citizens to be skeptical of their politicians, there must be a certain base level of trust for the system to work at all.
Hopefully, coronavirus vaccines are indeed as safe and effective as we have been told. If they are, and if vaccine-hesitant Americans end up dying of the virus unnecessarily, then the brunt of the blame should lie with those bureaucrats who have betrayed the trust we have vested in them. This trust will not be regained without a public reckoning for Fauci and his ilk, a reckoning that, under the current administration, is unlikely to come.